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fgregg / chicago-historical-addresses

Digitizing crosswalks of historical Chicago addresses
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update the readme with a description of the problem #1

Open fgregg opened 2 years ago

fgregg commented 2 years ago

lets add some text about why we and how addresses changed.

add some examples of what a digital crosswalk would let researchers do

gneidhardt commented 2 years ago

Chicago History users would definitely like to have a searchable database, where they enter a current or old address and the reverse comes up. I think ideally they'd also like to know if that street has a different name (and when that changed), possibly where the name came from, and links to PIN, building permit, etc. UIC is currently undergoing a project to transcribe building permits and I can see if someone there wants to be involved here?

As Robert mentioned via Twitter, I think the researcher ideal would be an interactive map with all that information.

tewhalen commented 2 years ago

Perhaps we should try to decide whether the best path to pursue is (A) to manually "correct the OCR" and then worry about how to parse that intermediate data into a full mapping from old address to new address, or (B) try to go from the OCR or page image directly to an address mapping.

I'm clearly thinking a lot about #5, so maybe I'm wrong and these aren't actually two different approaches?

gneidhardt commented 2 years ago

@tewhalen fwiw, I think (a) is a better immediate goal - get a usable set of data, which can then be used in multiple ways by whoever wants it. I defer to you all, but I think we can get help with manual data review to correct the OCR as well.

tewhalen commented 2 years ago

I took a quick pass at something that can recombobulate OCR data and show it back alongside the column image, as a gesture at how a front-end for data correction might look. I don't think I have the expertise to actually build it, but it seems fairly simple to someone with the chops? http://introvert.net/2021/11/1909test/

gneidhardt commented 2 years ago

@tewhalen as someone who definitely doesn't have the chops, this looks excellent to me! intuitive to use and very easy to scan from original to data. would it be possible to label the columns, just at the top? thinking this might help make it super duper clear, especially with a wide range of potential volunteers. I love the highlight source feature.

aoifefahey commented 2 years ago

Regarding changing street names, is the scope of this project solely digitizing the 1909 renumbering plan, or is creating a database of all address changes within the scope of this project?

fgregg commented 2 years ago

Regarding changing street names, is the scope of this project solely digitizing the 1909 renumbering plan, or is creating a database of all address changes within the scope of this project?

@aoifefahey, i think we should start with a tight focus on the 1909 renumbering and if we can do that, we can maybe do more.